﻿506 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



passing current like the weeds around him, and the shoals will 

 approach, browsing the vegetation, or pursuing their crustaceous 

 diet right into his very mouth. And that such surroundings as the 

 foregoing are most congenial to the angler's tastes is abundantly 

 evinced by the habit of the specimen in the Manchester Aquarium. 

 He is ever slinking off to the rock work, and establishing himself so 

 closely in some snug corner that it requires, notwithstanding his 

 large size, a considerable amount of diligent search to detect him." 



Conceding the perfect aptness of Kent's remarks, the story is yet 

 only half told. There can be little question that the foremost spine 

 of the angler, with its leaf-like or worm-like appendages, does really 

 attract fishes, in so far as they are moved by curiosity at least to 

 approach so near that the angler can leap upon them and engulf 

 them in its capacious mouth. Two thousand years ago and more 

 the adaptation for concealment as well as for capture, by attracting 

 other fishes, was recognized by naturalists and philosophers. Cicero 

 of old, in his work on Natural Theology, looking at one side only 

 of the question, called attention to the ability of the angler (or 

 sea frog as he called it) to conceal itself and yet attract other fishes 

 for its consumption. 1 Could those other fishes be heard, they would 

 tell a story against providential interference ! 



Not long after the observations made by Kent in England, even 

 better ones were made by the German naturalist Schmidtlein on 

 individuals kept in captivity in aquaria at the zoological station of 

 Naples. His account is here translated from the original German : 



Lophius embodies, so to speak, a living angling apparatus. Unfor- 

 tunately there is not much to record concerning its habits in cap- 

 tivity that might be considered as a contribution to the already 

 known characters, for it is so peculiarly adapted for its dark mud- 

 bottom, that it can never endure the confinement in our bright, well- 

 lighted prisons with the clean sand for more than a few days. It lies 

 for the most part on the bottom in perfect apathy without burying 

 itself in the sand, and stares with its big dull, glazed eyes straight 

 before it. while the jaws of the enormous mouth open a little and 

 close at every breath, and the lobed barbels on the chin swing back 

 and forth. At times it raises the "hooks" on the head and lets the 

 terminal lappets play, or it yawns and changes the color of its dull 

 mud dress into a lighter or darker shade. It never takes any food 



1 Ranae autem marinse dicuntur obruere sese arena solerc, et moveri prope 

 am, ad quas, quasi ad escam, pisccs cum acesserint, confici a ramis, atque 

 consumi. De Natura Deorum, 1, 49. 



